Not Our Heroes

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

From conversations, it is clear there is a divide in perspective between many converts and born Muslims.  And as well-meaning as the born Muslims are, they do not always get it.  Our coming to Islam does not mean we repudiate and insult our culture, our previous religion and our families.  we should refuse to cut off our heritage to please some bigot from the “heartland” of Islam. 

People like Shaykh Ahmad Husayn Diydat (r.a.) and Zakir ‘Abd al-Karim Nayk are not our great callers of Islam.  They are not necessarily our heroes.  They are the attacks dogs of an emasculated Muslim community that thinks they can only feel good by bringing others down.  Do Muslims think people will rush to Islam just because someone can find some error here or there in the Bible?  Non-Muslims find “errors” in the Qur’an and the ahadits all the time.  Has that caused hundreds to leave Islam?  So what makes the Muslims so special?  It is not as if any of them were such charismatic public speakers that we were all in swoon. 

By and large, large sections of the Muslims, particular those born into Islam and never had a real convert friend, are being hypocrites.  If we had a non-Muslim “scholar” with no knowledge of Arabic or the sciences of the Qur’an come and nitpick verses of the Qur’an because he memorised the Muhsin Khan translation, we would rightly call him out on that.  But it is perfectly acceptable to hail idiots like Zakir Nayk as some great authority just because he allegedly memorised a version of a translation of the Bible. 

If Muslims do not take every verse literally and no verse without a context, what makes them think Christians did the same with the Bible?  If Muslims have the exegesis and the narrations, what makes them think Christianity does not have a substantial body of works on Biblical hermeneutics?  If Muslims have sects and differences amongst the scholars, what makes them think Christian do not have the same? 

How did the ummah abrogate its vast intellectual tradition of interfaith relationships and comparative religion and allow poor substitutes such as Shaykh Diydat (r.a.) and Zakir Nayk to become our spokespersons to the Christians?  They are not my heroes.  I am not in awe of them.  And it is not a pillar of faith to accept them or the shoddy goods they peddle.